I grabbed her hair tight and held her lips against mine.
Her moans turned urgent. I reached down into the water, heedless of my long-sleeve shirt, and found her gorgeous slit. Her hips wiggled as I teased her, rolling around her folds before pressing against her clit.
Her kiss turned wild. She bit my tongue and I let loose a savage growl. I grabbed her and lifted her up from the water, perching her on the wide shelf beside the tub. She sucked in a breath, body running with water, beautiful and perfect.
I spread her legs and licked her folds, lapping my tongue up along her pussy. She moaned in surprise and pleasure, and I pressed a finger inside, teasing her wet little cunt—god, she was soaked already, and not from the bath. I pushed another finger inside, fucking her slowly at first, then moving faster as I licked her clit, sucking and nibbling, using my teeth to make her gasp in pleasure and pain. I dug my fingers into her back with my other hand, and she gripped my hair like she might rip it from my scalp.
I wanted to make her feel better, and this was the only way I knew how.
Death didn’t mean much to me. I grew up around blood, taught to constantly anticipate my own demise.
Evgeni made sure I knew that my life was contingent on my loyalty. He made sure that I knew I owed him everything.
But to Fiona, this must’ve been a horrible experience, watching one of her cousins get killed. If I could get inside of her and take away that moment, I’d do it without hesitation.
I’d give up a lot if I could protect her from that.
I couldn’t though.
The best I could do was to give her pleasure. To make her feel so good that for one perfect moment, she forgot all about her pain and existed only in that space of incredible floating ecstasy.
The little death.
I wanted to make her come.
I kept going, licking her clit and sucking it, fucking her with my fingers, and digging my fingers into her ass, gripping her tight. Her moans echoed through my house like she wanted to scream until the windows shattered, and I kept going, pushing her harder, fucking her faster with my fingers, tasting her sticky-sweet clit, eating her delicious arousal, tasting every drop of it, until her back arched out and I reached up to tease one stiff nipple, still fucking her, still licking her, and she came in heavenly waves, in gasping, screaming moans, my name on her tongue, her eyes rolled back, her pleasure on my lips.
I lapped her up, licked every last drop, drank her down like cool running water until she finally came to a gasping, twitching halt and leaned back against the cool tile wall, staring at me with her lips parted.
I stood and slowly took off my shirt.
She stared and there was a hint of fear in her eyes when I took off my pants.
I was hard. I couldn’t help myself.
She was a goddess and her taste was like heaven.
I climbed into the water and pulled her down with me. I held her, only held her, my big arms wrapped around her body, and after a moment, she relaxed into my embrace.
She didn’t speak, but I felt her tears on my chest, mingling with the bathwater, slipping away into nothing.
17
Fiona
I woke hoping the day before had just been a nightmare.
But I knew it wasn’t. Donal was dead and I watched him die right there on the sidewalk.
I stayed in bed alone for a while, staring up at the ceiling. I heard Mack wake up and move around the apartment, but he didn’t come in to bother me. On the one hand, I was grateful he was letting me sleep in—but I craved his touch and his taste, especially right now, right when I was starting to wonder if I’d made a mistake.
One of my cousins was dead. Mack hadn’t killed him, but he’d been involved. More might die in the future, all because Mack was a Russian and I was Irish and we weren’t supposed to be together.
My family would never accept it. Sooner or later, they’d find out, and then the blood would flow.
I wanted to pretend like Mack would take the brunt of that violence, but I knew better. If my family decided to come after him, more and more of them would end up dead.
Mack was a monster. He was inhuman, the way he moved, the way he stopped Donal’s knife attack and somehow managed to used Donal’s body as a human shield. It was horrifying—the sort of thing no person should ever be able to do.
And yet he hadn’t even broken a sweat.
It was uncanny and terrifying how easily he killed and shrugged the death off. I shouldn’t have been surprised, considering that wasn’t the first time I saw him do something so monstrous, but watching it happen to people I knew was too much.